Emilio poured him another double dose and dropped one more cube of ice in his glass. Hunter watched it crack as it hit the light brownish liquid. A man sitting at the end of the bar in a battered gray suit coughed a throaty, smoker’s cough and Hunter’s mind went back to Derek Nicholson and the case. Why kill someone who was already dying of lung cancer? Someone who was already condemned to such a painful death? One, maybe two more months at the most, and his cancer would’ve finished him off anyway. But the killer couldn’t . . . wouldn’t allow that to happen. He wanted to be the one delivering the fatal blow. The one looking into Nicholson’s eyes when he died. The one playing God.
Hunter had a sip of his drink and closed his eyes. He had a bad feeling about this case. A really bad feeling.
Nine
In a city like Los Angeles, violent crimes aren’t uncommon. In fact, they are pretty much the norm. It’s not surprising that on average LA coroners are as busy throughout the year as any ER doctor. Work piles up like snow, and everything has to follow a schedule. Even with an urgent request, it was a whole day before Doctor Hove was able to start the autopsy on Derek Nicholson’s body.
Hunter had managed to get only four hours of sleep. In the morning his eyes felt gritty, and the headache lurking at the base of his skull was typical of a sleep hangover. Experience told him that there was nothing he could do or take to get rid of it. It’d been part of his life for over thirty years now.
Hunter was getting ready to leave for the PAB when Doctor Hove called saying that she was finally done with Derek Nicholson’s autopsy.
At 7:30 a.m., he covered the seven miles between his apartment and the LA County Department of Coroner in North Mission Road in seventeen minutes flat. Garcia had arrived just a minute before him and was waiting for Hunter in the parking lot. He was clean shaven and his hair was still wet from his shower, but the bags under his eyes belied the fresh morning look.
‘I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not looking forward to this,’ Garcia said, greeting Hunter as he stepped out of his car.
Hunter looked at him curiously. ‘Have you ever looked forward to anything when you walk into this building?’
Garcia stared at the old hospital turned morgue. The building was architecturally impressive. Its façade was a stylish combination of red brick and light-gray lintels. The sumptuous steps that led to its main entrance added another touch of elegance to a structure that could easily be mistaken for a traditional European university edifice. A beautiful shell for a building that sheltered so much death.
‘Point taken,’ Garcia admitted.
Doctor Hove met both detectives by the staff entrance door on the right side of the building. Her silky black hair was tied back into a conservative-looking bun. She had no makeup on, and the whites of her eyes showed just enough red to suggest that she hadn’t had a good night of sleep either.
They greeted each other with simple head bobs, and in silence Hunter and Garcia followed her into a long and brightly lit corridor. At that time in the morning, there was no one else around, which, coupled with the bland white walls and the squeaky-clean vinyl floors, made the place look and feel much more sinister.
At the end of the hallway, they took the steps going down to the basement and onto a shorter and not so well-lit corridor.
‘I used our special autopsy theater,’ the doctor said as she came up to the last door on the right.
Special Autopsy Theater One was usually used for postmortem examinations of bodies that, for one reason or another, could still pose some sort of public threat – infection with highly contagious viral diseases, exposure to radioactive materials and/or locations, chemical-warfare agent contaminations, and so on. The room had its own separate database system and cold-storage facility. Its heavy door was secured by a six-digit electronic lock combination. The chamber was also sometimes used during high-profile murder investigations – a security provision to better prevent sensitive information from reaching the press and other unwanted parties. Hunter had been in it plenty of times.
Doctor Hove punched the code into the metal keyboard on the wall and the heavy door buzzed open.
They all stepped inside a large and winter-cold room. It was lit by two rows of florescent lights that ran the length of the ceiling. Two steel tables dominated the main floor space, one fixed, one wheeled. A blue hydraulic hoist stood next to a wall of fridges with small, square, mirror-polished doors. Both examination tables were covered by white sheets.
Doctor Hove put on a new pair of latex gloves and approached the one furthest from the door.
‘OK, let me show you what I found out.’